IRS Paid More Than $24 Billion in Potentially Improper Refunds

The Internal Revenue Serviced paid out more than $24 billion in refunds in 2016 that were claimed under potentially improper tax credits, according to The Washington Times.

Payments of $16.8 billion were made to Earned Income Tax Credit claims, a 24-percent mistake rate. The Additional Child Tax Credit claims paid out $7.2 billion in improper payments. Claims on a higher education tax credit improperly paid $1.1 billion, according to a new audit, reported The Times.

Another $118 million was paid to people not authorized to work in the U.S., according to the Times.

Improper payouts for the higher education tax credit decreased, but error rates for the earned income and child credits were about the same as 2016, the report said.

A 2015 law sets delays on refunds for those who claim the credits, in order to give agents more time to note tax returns that draw suspicion, The Times reported.

The IRS investigated people who have Social Security numbers, but are not authorized to work in the U.S. — more than 49,000 of those claimed the earned income tax credit.

The agency said that reprogramming tax systems for the 2016 filing season did not allow time to institute the 2015 law, but since that time, the IRS has fully implemented it, The Times reported.

The IRS is responsible for processing tax-credit amounts on tax returns. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a report that it might not report estimates on improper payments for the tax credit program until at least 2022 because of the difficulty of the process to find the estimates.

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